This is a blog about the people, processes, and thoughts about technology previews from Autodesk.

March 23, 2012

Up, Up, and Away My Beautiful Balloon

On February 1 Autodesk Labs moved into the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Though Shaan Hurley and I are still doing our same jobs, we do get a chance to see the company from a slightly different perspective and interact with new team members. Many of you know our CTO, Jeff Kowalski, from his presentations at Autodesk University or other Autodesk events.

Well Jeff recently shared a story with his team and gave me permission to blog about it. Jeff's son attends Redwood Day School in Oakland, California. As an involved parent, Jeff helped out with a science experiment conducted by the third-grade class. Here are some excerpts from Jeff's story.

You might remember me telling you last November that a few parents at my son's school got together to design and launch a high-altitude photography experiment with our kids. It was great fun, but our transmitter failed, and we didn't retrieve the payload as planned when it landed. We did label the craft with contact info, and just last night, four months later, we got the call that it was found by a farming family in Los Banos (within a mile of our predicted landing site).

The 8-year old scientists did the lift calculations and designed and built both the craft and its lift system. Our telemetry shows the craft made it above 90,000 feet. Total flight time 2 hours, 34 minutes. All recording equipment operated as planned.

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Up, Up, and Away My Beautiful Balloon

On February 1 Autodesk Labs moved into the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Though Shaan Hurley and I are still doing our same jobs, we do get a chance to see the company from a slightly different perspective and interact with new team members. Many of you know our CTO, Jeff Kowalski, from his presentations at Autodesk University or other Autodesk events.

Well Jeff recently shared a story with his team and gave me permission to blog about it. Jeff's son attends Redwood Day School in Oakland, California. As an involved parent, Jeff helped out with a science experiment conducted by the third-grade class. Here are some excerpts from Jeff's story.

You might remember me telling you last November that a few parents at my son's school got together to design and launch a high-altitude photography experiment with our kids. It was great fun, but our transmitter failed, and we didn't retrieve the payload as planned when it landed. We did label the craft with contact info, and just last night, four months later, we got the call that it was found by a farming family in Los Banos (within a mile of our predicted landing site).

The 8-year old scientists did the lift calculations and designed and built both the craft and its lift system. Our telemetry shows the craft made it above 90,000 feet. Total flight time 2 hours, 34 minutes. All recording equipment operated as planned.